US: Rape is Rape campaign wins victory
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1400/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9115
Brilliant work by the Feminist Majority Foundation to alter the FBI’s previous outdated definition of rape. The new definition is much more inclusive.
India: Education and employment bring abuse
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106208
Educated and employed as a librarian at the Islamic University of Science and Technology in Kashmir, Shazia was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her room on Nov. 9. Though police suspect suicide, Shazia’s parents believe their daughter’s death to be a fatal case of domestic violence.
Shazia’s father says that his son-in-law, Javaid Ahmad, tortured his wife verbally and physically on a daily basis for not bringing him a big enough dowry. He often threw her out of the house and finally divorced her verbally after she gave birth to a daughter.
So…women don’t get educated or work, they get beaten up. Women get educated and/or get a job, they still get beaten up. Ergo, women really get beaten up just because they’re women. Did I miss anything?
Saudi Arabia: Women only to work in lingerie shops
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16412202
The new law could potentially create up to 40,000 jobs for ordinary Saudi women who have hitherto had little or no access to employment.
But it also means that male clerks, most of whom are foreign workers, will be out of a job.
It is not far short of a social revolution being pushed through in the teeth of fierce opposition from the kingdom’s top clerics.
They do not want to see an increase in the number of women working outside the home.
The kingdom’s Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdel Aziz al-Sheikh, has warned shop owners that employing women is a “crime and prohibited by Islamic sharia law”.